Danny was going to destroy the world
by SapphireSecret
Summary: "Because what Danny and Tucker just didn't seem to get was that sort of use of his powers – it was a very slippery slope." After the crisis with Dark Dan, Sam has to make a decision... and it isn't going to be pretty.


Danny was going to destroy the world.

The thought would have made her scoff before the last couple of days. If someone had told her that a week ago she would have laughed in their face. But now...

Sam sat cross-legged on her queen sized bed, staring soullessly at the bottle of aloe and the box of super-sized Band-Aids laying before her on her crimson bed spread. Her back and arms throbbed hotly under the bandages, burned from the overheated vat of Nasty Burger sauce she'd been tied to for – well, it had seemed like a horrible eternity, but had only been for about an hour and a half.

That had been terrifying beyond expression. Trapped with deadly heat building behind her, knowing that when the temperature became high enough she was going to die in a fiery explosion... the waiting itself was torture. Knowing, as the uncomfortably warm metal at her back became painfully hot, then started burning her slowly, that soon she would be just – just, gone. Dead at fourteen. Nothing accomplished, no causes crusaded for.

And for what? To lure her best friend into a trap, and consequently destroy the world.

The whole _world_. Sam couldn't even grasp the vast number of people that must be, how many cultures and stories and wonders that would be lost forever. It was hard to imagine that herself, Tucker, and the Fentons could be such a... a catalyst. Such a devastating linchpin.

Or that _Danny_, her fun, brave, loyal, super-powered best friend with a never-ending supply of corny jokes, could cause such total destruction.

But Sam had seen the future, had tumbled through an ancient ghost's time portal and seen with her own eyes what was to come.

Amity Park had grown. Sam had seen husks of skyscrapers – not many, but even a few indicated a metropolis in the making – that looked like they'd been _bombed_. There hadn't been a single standing building without holes blasted through them, their interiors charred and filled with rubble. And the _bodies_ –

Sam swallowed and tightly clenched her blanket in her fists, sucking in fast breaths between her teeth. Her stomach churned nauseatingly. Those mangled, twisted corpses were tattooed onto her brain. A man's lifeless body had been slumped over a steering wheel in a crumpled, burning car, the windshield painted with his blood; multiple people had been shot down on a street she and Tucker had fled down, one of them a _kid_, and they'd all had body parts blasted off or else appeared to have been completely torn apart, all fleshy and gruesome and _wet_; there had been shattered remains of some poor person who had been frozen solid and had burst into pieces like a banana dipped in liquid nitrogen; a sickening pool of partially congealed blood had been growing from under a thick concrete wall, and while Sam hadn't seen the body, her imagination supplied her with plenty of harrowing images.

She felt tainted, like a rot had latched onto her soul, like she had gone through a war zone, like she'd seen the worst humanity had to offer, and...

Danny had done _all of it_.

Sam released her white-knuckled grip on her blanket, absently smoothing out the wrinkles. Tears blackened by mascara streamed unchecked down her face – they had been for a long time now. She'd never been the type to cry, but she just couldn't seem to stop.

Danny was going to destroy the world, and only Tucker, Jazz, Danny, and herself knew about it.

Oh, after everything was over Danny had promised, he'd _sworn_ he wouldn't become that monster – _Dan, _the evil, future version of Danny had called himself. He'd meant it; he'd been determined. And Sam wanted to believe in him, wanted to trust him. She wanted to so much it _ached_, but this was too big, too important to leave to blind trust. The timeline had changed, but it was impossible for Sam to ignore the fact that it was _her_ Danny, her goofy best friend that she saw every day and had known since middle school, that she had risked her life for in the past and vice versa, that apparently went crazy after seeing them all die and then turned around and killed _everything_.

The same Danny. The same powers, same personality – and the same heretofore unknown mental instability.

Sam sighed shakily, closing her eyes and trying to think rationally. Okay, maybe the 'mental instability' part was unfair. Anyone would snap after seeing their whole family and their best friends blow up right in front of them, especially if they considered it their responsibility to save people like Danny did.

But Danny was different from most people. He was special, he was powerful. Very powerful. He could not afford to snap – the _world_ couldn't afford for him to snap.

Even before this all happened, Sam had been concerned for Danny. He had been becoming more violent when he battled ghosts, not caring like he used to if he hurt them. He'd been abusing his powers, using them to get petty revenge against people he didn't like – Dash, Kwan, even Paulina.

And, okay, in the beginning Sam had laughed about it too, especially when he'd invisibly dumped a bucket of spaghetti on Paulina after she'd trashed Sam's locker. But he'd been doing it more and more. A little ectoblast out of his finger here, some intangibility there. The bullying A-list popular kids were finally getting a taste of what they'd been dishing out for years, but as she saw what she had wished for _years_ become reality, Sam just felt cold.

Because what Danny and Tucker just didn't seem to _get_ was that sort of use of his powers – it was a very slippery slope.

And then he'd stolen the answers to the C.A.T.

And he _didn't_ _listen_.

A tear dropped onto her phone. Sam wiped it off with her thumb, leaving a pixilated trail over the number on the screen. The number that could ruin multiple lives, but could save the world.

She thought of Danny, her best friend that she loved.

And then she thought of Dan.

_Dammit_. Sam hated herself for even considering betraying her friend, but –

Danny was going to destroy the world.

* * *

**A/N: End!  
**

**I may continue this, I have a couple of ideas, but for now I'm leaving it as a one-shot.**

**So, what did you think? I had just read yet another fanfiction where Danny was betrayed by his friends and family, it was all very angsty, and I thought – how can I make that happen, but without it being OOC? While I can't really picture the Sam from the show going through with this, you have to admit, when she's traumatized, injured, feels like the weight of the world rests on her, it's just after the crisis has ended and she hasn't been told the whole story yet...**

**Well. Everyone makes mistakes.**


End file.
